Best Practices

Regardless of what deck (or any deck at all) you use for inspiration, below are a few guiding principles that researchers should keep in mind when designing client deliverables.

BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front

Don’t bury the lede. In other words, begin with key information.
For example, key findings or takeaways should be in the first 2 to 3 slides

Headlines Should Describe the Key Finding

All slide headlines, when concatenated, should add up to an executive summary

Use Icons to Concisely Summarize Lengthy Group Descriptions

Rather than repeating lengthy pieces of text to describe sub-groups or segments (e.g., “Southern Millennials who voted for Biden”), use representative shorthand icons
For example, notice the use of icons to summarize segments and geographies—once introduced, these icons can be used repeatedly throughout the deck

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Use Colors to Your Advantage

Colors are a great way to effortlessly attract your audience’s eyes to key information
For example, see how colors are used to quickly distill a large amount of information; the main takeaway being that housing affordability issues are important to all mindset segments in California

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Use Consistent Color Palettes, Icons, and Patterns of Conveying Information*

When you use a color or icon to represent a group, continue to use that color or icon throughout the deck; deviations increase the likelihood of confusing your audience
When you depict significance testing in a particular way, continue to repeat the pattern throughout the deck
Generally speaking, when you’ve established a pattern or heuristic for your audience, don’t deviate from it

Use a Tutorial or “Primer” Slide to Help Your Audience Interpret Complex Tables or Plots

Rather than depicting a complex table or plot, consider walking your audience through an annotated example to help them understand where to look for key information
For example, this primer—with annotations, icons, and colors—was used to help the audience interpret results from a complex difference in differences experiment

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Use Annotations Liberally to call Out Secondary Findings

Even when it doesn’t warrant headline news, you may want to direct your audience’s attention to interesting findings
Additionally, annotations can be used to help audience members understand how to interpret findings
For example, notice how secondary how the following slide uses annotations to both call out a secondary finding and explain a potentially confusing methodological wrinkle

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Use Visual Plots to Convey Magnitude Differences

When there are large magnitude differences, plots often do a better job of representing that than tables
For example, the following plot visually depicts the relative importance of one attribute—a table would not convey the same magnitude difference quite so well

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Use Consistent Slide Appearances

Stick to the same font and font sizes as much as possible
Make sure that elements of your slide are on the same spot as other slides
Make use of the Format Options panel to make elements the same size and keep the position in place

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